Fiscal 2007 was an exceptional year for Cisco. Our unique breadth and balance across more than two dozen product areas, four customer segments, and major developed and emerging countries helped Cisco to deliver another year of record financial results. We believe our balance across our business not only enabled accelerated revenue growth during the fiscal year, but is also a strategic differentiator for Cisco and critical to our ability to deliver strong performance for our shareholders.

To OurShareholders

Our success demonstrates that our vision for the industry’s evolution appears to be playing out as

all forms of communications and IT capabilities are being enabled by the network. Our differentiated

strategy and ability to execute are evident in our continued market leadership and the increased

share of our customers’ total communications and IT expenditures as they take full advantage of the

network to drive business transformation.

Vision: Driving Innovation to Change the Nature of Work and the Way We Live

More than a decade ago, we focused on migrating the world to an IP-based infrastructure where

the network was initially positioned to become the platform to enable transactions, such as entering

orders online, conducting Internet-based searches, and e-mail. Today, with the convergence of data,

voice, video, and mobility, the network is capable of optimizing and enriching a user’s experience. We

believe we are now entering what we see as the second major phase of the Internet’s impact on the

nature of business and life’s experiences and that this will result in dramatic innovation and produc-

tivity increases enabled by collaboration and Web 2.0 technologies such as unified communications

and TelePresence.

In fiscal 2007, we invested $4.5 billion in research and development. Listening to our customers and

investing to capture market transitions give us a competitive advantage that helps us to develop inno-

vative solutions that meet customer needs and drive our growth. Cisco TelePresence exemplifies this

kind of innovation. In demonstrations, customers immediately experience the impact of TelePresence

and understand its value for their businesses. The result has been rapidly accelerating growth in

recent quarters in only its first year in the market. TelePresence is perhaps our greatest example of

how the network is transforming the way we do business and how we interact, collaborate, and entertain.

Our innovation model is built around internal development, acquisitions, and partnerships. For

example, since the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta in fiscal 2006, we have transformed our video

capabilities and extended our leadership in this important market. Now, the acquisition of WebEx

in fiscal 2007 brings collaboration expertise to our customers and partners. Continued innovation

in our core routing and switching products is complemented by the further development of our

advanced technologies, including security, storage, unified communications, and wireless. We

believe our technology architecture approach, which is based on intelligence in the network and

tightly coupled products, is enabling gains in market share, sustainable competitive advantage,

and a greater share of customers’ IT budgets.

Strategy: Sustained Differentiation Across Customer Segments and Geographies

The foundation of Cisco’s strategy is made up of four pillars. First, identifying, investing, and positioning

Cisco to capture customer-driven market transitions. Second, constant innovation enabled through

building, buying, or collaborating with our partners. Third, a differentiated market approach with the

ability to tie together both technology and business architectures. Fourth, our cross-functional teamwork

and prioritization of initiatives that drive execution across products, value-added services, customer

segments, and geographic theaters.

12 Cisco Systems, Inc.

All aspects of Cisco’s differentiated strategy have evolved based on customer requirements to

create sustainable differentiation in the industry and better serve the needs of all our customers.

In fiscal 2007, we saw continued momentum and achieved balanced growth across our product

families, our customer segments (enterprise, service provider, commercial, and consumer), and

our key geographic theaters.

From a customer segment perspective, the commercial market remained very solid and well

balanced globally. We are continuing to expand our product offerings, services, and distribution

capabilities to this strategic market. These customers, which are typically small and medium-sized

businesses, are increasingly embracing networking technology as they scale and realize efficiencies

from their investments. With the addition of WebEx, we will begin to explore new ways to work with

small and medium-sized businesses as a trusted partner, and in turn help them grow and enhance

their businesses.

Our strategic value to our global service provider customers is increasing from both a technology

and a business architecture perspective. The proliferation of video and accelerating deployment

of HDTV and IPTV are influencing service providers to seek out innovative architectures that

provide network capacity to deliver rich, personalized user experiences. Cisco’s architectural

approach is designed to enable higher network capacity, intelligence, and resiliency to deliver

video and integrate video/IPTV in a range of consumer and business services to offer compelling

customer experiences. Our technologies transform service providers into “experience providers”

to enable the “Connected Life”—providing value throughout a consumer’s daily life at home, at

work, or on the move.

From a geographic perspective, we were pleased with the strong, balanced performance achieved

in our four largest theaters. These include the United States and Canada, European Markets, Emerging

Markets, and Asia Pacific. Perhaps our greatest geographic success of fiscal 2007 was the Emerging

Markets theater, where our revenue grew approximately 39 percent on a year-over-year basis. We

believe that our business process and collaborative approach to our Emerging Markets theater

contributed to this growth.

We believe that our unique go-to-market approach, in which Cisco serves as a key adviser to

governments around the world, is helping to drive country transformation by outlining process

change, building networks, and then providing the application services and expertise that support

key services for citizens, such as education, healthcare, public safety, economic development, and

national security. Relationships with government leaders worldwide, supported by our extensive

sales coverage, are key to our execution in these markets.

Execution: Measures of Success

For Cisco, successful execution is measured by product, customer segment, and geographic

market leadership on a global basis. As we position ourselves for the second phase of the Internet’s

innovation and productivity, people are turning to the network as the platform that enables all forms

of communications and IT. We are quickly adopting and helping our customers to adopt Web 2.0

technologies, such as unified communications and TelePresence.

In fiscal 2007, Cisco delivered strong results with accelerated revenue growth. Total revenue for fiscal

2007 was a record $34.9 billion, an increase of approximately 23 percent over fiscal 2006 revenue of

$28.5 billion. Of the total revenue in fiscal 2007, $29.5 billion was related to product revenue and $5.5

billion was related to service revenue.

We achieved strong revenue growth across our key geographic, customer, and product portfolios,

which demonstrates the power of our diversification. We believe our performance is evidence of the

underlying strength in our balanced product portfolio. Our reward is market leadership in almost all

product categories.

2007 Annual Report 13

In the first full fiscal year following the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta, the results of the acquisition

exceeded our expectations with greater market penetration, faster growth, and greater scale for

Scientific Atlanta products in international markets, and a stronger position for Cisco with service

providers worldwide.

We added approximately 11,600 employees on a net basis throughout the year. These additions drove

sales in video, Emerging Markets, and market expansion in the commercial customer segment. Even

with these headcount investments, net income grew approximately 31 percent on a year-over-year

basis to $7.3 billion in fiscal 2007, which made Cisco one of the most profitable companies in the tech-

nology sector. Earnings per share on a fully diluted basis for fiscal 2007 were $1.17. Cisco generated

$10.1 billion of cash from operations.

We continued to reduce our outstanding shares in fiscal 2007 by repurchasing 297 million shares of

common stock. From the inception of the repurchase program in fiscal 2002 through the end of fiscal

2007, Cisco has repurchased 2.2 billion shares for an aggregate purchase price of $43.2 billion.

Our pursuit of operational excellence drives us to continually seek ways to improve and streamline our

business processes across our global operations. Fiscal 2007 marked the year in which we realized

greater operating efficiencies as a result of completing our implementation of a new manufacturing

model: lean manufacturing. As a result of this initiative, Cisco achieved annualized inventory turns of

slightly above 10 in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. This is a significant accomplishment given the size

and breadth of our product lines.

Our track record of revenue and earnings growth, strong cash-generating capability, and healthy

balance sheet enable us to reinvest in our business when we are presented with market or customer

opportunities. We believe this helps us to drive ongoing innovation and supports our growth initiatives.

Corporate Citizenship and Social Responsibility

While we’re proud of the financial results we delivered in 2007, we are also very proud of our people,

our culture, and the way Cisco operates as a company. The fundamental value of our products rests

on our ability to seamlessly collaborate as an organization as well as provide access to information

and opportunities that help people improve the way they work, live, play, and learn. Our long-standing

commitment to corporate social responsibility extends from transforming global education to building

healthier, more productive communities, including our Green Initiative and commitments to global

sustainability.

We remain dedicated to education through the creation of innovative global learning initiatives. In fact,

this year marked the tenth anniversary of the Cisco Networking Academy,® a pioneering e-learning

program operating in approximately 165 countries worldwide with approximately 500,000 students.

Students acquire technical skills to enable their participation in a world that is increasingly driven by

technological initiatives, and in turn helps energize local economies. Through public and private sector

partnerships, our $40 million investment and involvement in the 21st Century Schools Initiative is rede-

fining the 21st century educational approach, and is rebuilding and improving entire communities.

We believe that solid business results and dedication to the environment go hand in hand. This past

year, Cisco established an EcoBoard to set an environmental strategy and oversee companywide

environmental programs. Cisco is committed to environmental responsibility in our business opera-

tions, products, and network architecture design. We believe that through the power of the network,

people are empowered to work, live, play, and learn in an environmentally sustainable way. This can

be accomplished through reduction in transportation-related emissions via collaborative tech-

nologies such as unified communications and TelePresence, and also through improvements in

workspace utilization and energy consumption.

14 Cisco Systems, Inc.

One Final Note

Over the past five years, our management team has evolved and so has our business leadership. One

of the core competencies of Cisco is our ability to evolve our organization and leadership teams while

still maintaining focus on implementation of our strategy. Over the years, Cisco has successfully transi-

tioned through many generations of key leaders in every functional leadership role in the company.

Dennis Powell became our Chief Financial Officer in 2003 and went on to lead the company with

an unwavering sense of integrity and fiduciary responsibility through some of the most challenging

economic times our industry has experienced. Under Dennis’ financial and operational leadership,

we achieved extraordinary growth in net income, cash from operations, market capitalization, and

market share gains versus our peers.

Following the second quarter of fiscal 2008, Dennis will retire from his role as Chief Financial Officer.

We thank him for his leadership and contributions to Cisco, especially his commitment to transparency

and integrity in financial reporting. Frank Calderoni, Senior Vice President of Customer Solutions

Finance, has been asked to succeed Dennis upon his retirement as Chief Financial Officer. Frank’s

experience directing global sales finance at Cisco is complemented by his prior background as

CFO at two public companies within the technology industry.

Our accomplishments and successes are built upon foundational relationships with our customers, our

worldwide partners, and our entire Cisco family. We wish to thank our customers, partners, employees,

and shareholders for their ongoing trust, confidence, and support as we become positioned to execute

on the next wave of the Internet. Working together, we believe Cisco technology will change the nature

of work and the way we live. We hope you will join us.

John T. Chambers

Chairman and CEO, Cisco

September 2007

2007 Annual Report 15